Friday, February 6, 2015

Dianna Gunn; Promotion Specialist

I've been very fortunate to have found a wonderful publisher to reissue my first epic fantasy series,

The Futhark Chronicles. Musa Publishing is a very professional business and I've had the pleasure of the last few months to work with Dianna Gunn, the promotion specialist assigned to help me. I've already learned so much from her and today she shares why she loves her job.

The
Best Job in the World

Last year I was hired by Musa Publishing to
work as a Book Promotions Specialist focused primarily on expanding the reach
of our speculative fiction. I had done social media marketing for a variety of
small businesses, but I always daydreamed about working with books.

I've known I wanted to be an author since I
was eight years old, and working in the publishing industry seemed like a
natural extension of that. So I jumped at the opportunity and started working
with some great authors right away.

Five months later I'm pretty confident that
was the best decision I've ever made. Here are some of the reasons why:

The
people I work with are fantastic. Everyone I work
with is passionate about the same thing I am: books. Some like different genres
and authors than I do, but they still love books. This means we have plenty to
talk about and that nerdy references can often be expected during our
conversations.

Quite a few of the people I work with have
also shown interest in my own writing and their support and encouragement has
helped me make leaps and bounds towards achieving "published author"
status myself.

I feel
a deep sense of pride when one of my authors gets a good review. I know the books I work with are fantastic—I've never read a Musa
book I didn't like, and I've been reading them since the company opened its
doors—but it's even better when I see somebody we don't work with talking about
how much they enjoyed one of our novels.

Getting reviews on big book blogs can be
difficult, but every time I've managed to get a spot on a big blog, the blogger
happened to love the book. Seeing a 4 or 5 star rating tells me all my hard
work paid off—and that I'm not just supporting great people, I'm supporting
great books.

We all
learn from each other. Everybody I work with has a
different skill set. Some of my authors have only published their first novel
in the last month—and others have their first release date coming up soon. Some
of the Promotions Specialists I work with have been working in the publishing
industry for years. I've been studying social media marketing actively for the
last five years and got my first social media job in 2012.

I've been in a pretty constant state of
learning since Musa hired me, and it's incredible. I know so much more about
book marketing than I did five months ago, and a huge part of what I do is
simply pass that information along to authors as I learn it.

Musa
is constantly growing. Individual book sales might
show only increase slightly from month to month, but Musa is growing all the
time. We are actively looking for new staff and new authors, and book sales are
steadily increasing.

Being part of a company that's in a constant
state of growth and change means two things: I can clearly see my influence on
the company's growth, and there's endless opportunity for me to advance my
career. There's room for me to grow with Musa, to build a solid career with a
company I've truly come to love.

Book
promotion isn't easy, but most of the time it's
incredible fun. The week before a release might be insane and sometimes you
really feel like you're shouting into the wind, but it's all worth it. I
wouldn't trade my job for anything in the world.

Dianna Gunn is a freelance writer and Book Promotions Specialist who's working hard to add published author to that list of titles. She also happens to love cats, photography and Scotland.

I've done quite a bit of book promotion (and blog tour set-up) for several small publishers and you're right, it's not easy to get the big sites. One thing is you can't be hesitant. It's always no if you don't try. Glad you see you're fearless in approaching them. It's easier when you have a good product and sounds like you do. :-)